


Disarm

by penhales



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Adulthood, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Unofficial Sequel, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:12:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16616117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhales/pseuds/penhales
Summary: Jim graduates from the naval academy and after a struggle finding work, accepts a job he'd prefer not to. He's happy for the honest work at first, but he finds that the course he's charted isn't as true to him as he originally thought. (WiP, will update weekly!)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> Technically, I've been in the Silverhawk camp for a few months now, but I didn't feel inspired to tell my own story about it until recently. To clarify for everyone here, no one in this story is underage, and no one in this story will be participating in underage sexual activity with adults, hence my choice not to use any archive warnings for now. There's going to be some original characters here and there, but this is otherwise going to be our main cast carrying the story. The timeline for this is about seven years after the events of the movie, and though I know Jim's age is fairly debatable, I've set him at just barely 17 in the movie, and 22 here. 
> 
> This is an ongoing work in progress and I'll be updating this on a weekly basis as I can, in the interest of giving myself some writing deadlines. I'll leave a note if it won't be possible, given an interested readership (I hope!), but otherwise you can expect weekly updates.

Returning to Montressor only a year after graduation felt like admitting defeat.

Spacing had become something of a dangerous profession since, seven years before, the legendary Treasure Planet had gone up in a flurry of fire and dust, forever scattering the lost treasure across the shimmering expanse. No one wept for the black hearted, greedy thieves that were lost to the vast darkness of space with the clinging to the emptiness of their desire for riches. A sense of invincibility swept the navy and the victorious crew returned home as heroes, but their triumph didn’t last long.

Great armadas of pirates began attacking naval and civilian ships alike, leaving no survivors. They’d never seen forces like it in all the history of the Queen’s Navy, and it seemed that no vessel was immune to the destruction. It had become dangerous enough that only ships filled with the most experienced crews were allowed to leave their port, and only on special orders. Even most officers had been told to remain on solid ground unless instructed otherwise, leaving the new graduates of the Naval Academy somewhat in the lurch. Hundreds of them were given their tidy stipend on which to make indefinite port and politely instructed to await orders.

Ultimately, it seemed like the right thing for Jim Hawkins to do; to go home.

Jim’s mother had seen him often, of course, being that the academy was within a few hours distance, but he’d been avoiding the inevitable return as graduation neared. For the last three graduating naval classes before him, not one of his older classmates had been asked to join a voyage. He was certain, watching Agnes, the most talented spacer in the class ahead of his, that she would land a fantastic assignment after her graduation. Agnes had broken every Qattindog record that Amelia had set before her. It was no surprise then when she shipped out on the next vessel just after graduation, starry-eyed and fierce. The ship was confirmed as lost in space a few months later, and that was the end of that.

Jim understood the writing on the wall, of course; the navy he was so proud to be a member of was on the losing side. Like a cancer, the pirates were always growing, always spreading from port to port. His best option, given the circumstances, was to return home and wait, and to understand that the next call could mean losing all of it: Crescentia, Montressor, and home, forever. There was still time left to spend with his family, no matter how little it might turn out to be.

It was the dead of night when he finally reached the comforting warmth of the Benbow. The parlor was dark, with only the light from the kitchen illuminating the vague outlines of the sofas and tables. His mother had rearranged things since Jim had last been home, and he bumped into a table unceremoniously on his way toward the light’s source. Sarah appeared in the lit doorway like a flash and opened her arms to him.

“Honey! I didn’t know you were coming home tonight!”

Jim rested his chin on her head, his chest tightening slightly at the feel of how tired she was.

“I thought I’d drop in. I might need to stay a little while.”

Jim braced himself for disappointment, but as was characteristic of his mom, Sarah grinned at him.

“Of course! Stay as long as you want!”

It was no secret to him that she was lonely. Sarah was good at putting on a brave face and getting herself through the day, she’d been doing it since the morning his father left them, but Jim understood too that not even Delbert and Amelia could provide the kind of familial support that she needed.

Jim glanced around her at the kitchen. It was bigger and better equipped than any inn’s kitchen had a right to be, but Jim wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. If one of the best galley chefs in the galaxy paid for the kitchen, it would be a kitchen prepared for all occasions. He hadn’t the heart to tell her, in the end, that a pirate had paid for her rebuild, and she’d never asked.

“The place looks good. You did something to the parlor.”

Sarah shrugged.

“I’m surprised you even noticed! I felt like it needed a change. I never used to have time to think about this stuff, but you know Qee, it’s hard to find things to _do_ , these days.”

Qee was a helpful but overzealous Tilbin, loaded with arms to spare, but with all of the charisma of a cold, wet sock. He could be trusted to clean up after the messier guests, bus tables, and arrange rooms, but he couldn’t be bothered to show a shred of interest in the guests or even attempt to greet them. Most Tilbin were fairly friendly, with few exceptions, but Qee was known to emit high pitched, deafening noises of discomfort when engaged by anyone but Sarah.

“I do…is he still sleeping underneath the bed?”

Sarah chuckled.

“It saves B.E.N. and me some time washing sheets.”

His mother sighed in the way that meant she was preparing to ask a difficult question.

“Jim, honey, you know- Delbert said he could use a lab assistant.”

Jim resisted the urge to respond poorly.

“Oh, right.”

“It would only be for a little while, Jim.”

“It’s okay, I should stay busy. Sitting still is one of the worst things I could do.”

She smiled at him and then yawned.

“Well, why don’t you think about it tonight? You can decide in the morning.”

Jim knew that his decision would still be the same whether he slept on it or not. His mother had brilliant methods to guilt him into whatever she needed from him, and so if Dr. Doppler requested his help, he’d be providing it, come hell or Sarah Hawkins.

He trudged up to his room around one in the morning, trying to give Sarah a good excuse to drag her own self to bed. She always slept better when Jim was home, knowing he was somewhere safe. The bedroom he’d picked out was still unfamiliar to him, his own childhood bedroom nothing more than some ashes scattered across Montressor’s surface.

Jim hadn’t exactly visited home often while at the academy. He’d needed the space at the time, he’d needed to begin carving out his identity, establishing himself at the school. Once he’d made them memorize who he was and what he was there for, Jim had come home for the first time since leaving. He could rest easily knowing his footing was set in place then, but the uncertainty of the future hung over him like a fog that night.

He’d have to start all over again, there at home, establish himself and make his adulthood and independence clear. Dr. Doppler would consider him a child, and if Amelia was anywhere to be found she’d make it her personal mission to boss him into the ground and put him in his place. Jim knew he’d earned it well enough, creating something of a reputation at the academy for his ruthlessness and cunning. After his time on the RLS Legacy, Jim had such a far-reaching reputation that even his instructors had received him with some barely contained glee. He wasn’t the top spacer in his class, but he was the only one with any experience battling real pirates and he was frequently called on to answer the toughest questions they could think of. The simulation voyages had been where Jim really outshone the rest, his classmates tried to stick to the guidelines, follow procedure to a “T”, but Jim was willing to choose the creative option and see it through. By the end of the second year, new cadets were practically chasing him down in the streets to get his help, and he took to spending most of his time alone, if not working closely with his instructors on side projects. He enjoyed keeping to himself, and even by the beginning of year three, he’d already sequestered himself to a private apartment.

Jim took a deep breath and glanced around to re-familiarize himself with the bedroom he’d picked out, pleased at the reminder that his mother had gone to the trouble of hanging pictures of various ships of legend he’d loved as a child all over the room. Jim’s chest tightened as he realized she’d known he would have picked that room – all she needed was to find the one with the best view of the inn’s dock. He knew he wasn’t subtle in his habit of watching it as if someone might pull up and make port at any time, but he shook the thought as his bag began to rustle against his back impatiently. He slung it over his shoulder and onto the bed, opening the drawstring at the top to free his captive.

Morph slipped out like a vapor and chittered at Jim in irritation, earning himself a brief scratch on the head before Jim set himself to unpacking.

“I know, it’s stuffy in there.”

There were times that Jim found it hard to look at Morph at all. He was endlessly grateful for the little shape shifter’s company; it kept him sane and stable when his stress started to put a strain on him, and admittedly, remembering to take care of Morph’s needs kept him from totally forgetting his own. But sometimes, and only sometimes, Jim would look over at the little pink blob and a wave of bittersweet emotion would crash over him unexpectedly, leaving him feeling like he’d drifted out to the outer nether.

It was hard, sometimes, to avoid thinking about the Legacy, though Jim really tried to. Occasionally, he’d catch a smell, a feeling, even a pairing of words that would knock him back through time and for a second, he’d be free again. For a second, he’d be sitting in the ship’s rigging again, a breeze tousling his hair and the smell of pipe smoke, from just below him on deck, reminding him that he wasn’t alone. Jim closed his eyes and allowed himself just a moment to bask in the memory. He hadn’t known then that he’d still be waiting to cut his teeth out in the real world, seven years later. He’d still been silently begging for someone, anyone, just to look at him and see a real person, capable of doing more than failing repeatedly. There was something freeing about their lack of expectation, but he couldn’t have known at the time what pressures accomplishment would set on his shoulders. The sigh that escaped him relieved some of the weight of his painful memory, but a tug in his gut told him he’d struggle to sleep, after letting himself get so lost in the past again.

Morph rubbed up against his face affectionately, cooing some gentle concern.

“I’m okay. I’m just a little tired.”

Jim lied, depositing his rucksack beside the bed. To round out his performance, he removed his boots and stretched dramatically, laying himself out atop the bed sheets.

“See? Ready to sleep.”

Morph chirped back an openly doubtful,

“Ready to sleep.”

But he nestled himself against Jim’s face like a curled cat, complete with the whir of his purring. Jim shut his eyes, tight, and tried to let the white noise drown out his own head, praying sleep would come soon.

His limbs began to feel heavier, and his breaths slowed, with some time and patience. As he slowly began to drift off, the endless blue of the Etherium materialized just in front of him, and the sturdy, knotted rigging came up from behind him to support his back. Pipe smoke drifted in as if a passing perfume, and Jim was fully lost to his exhaustion before he could finish glancing down for its source.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adding Chapter 2 here to give y'all the rest of the story hook. Hope you enjoy!

Jim’s mother roused him from a dead sleep just as morning was creeping up on Montressor.

“Jim, there’s someone on the horn for you and you’re going to want to answer it.”

Jim mumbled his consent incoherently and tossed himself out of bed with all of the grace of an asteroid shower. Half awake, he stumbled down the stairs and into the parlor, where he nearly walked straight through the waiting hologram of Admiral Doppler. Alarmed at his near mistake, Jim sprang back and squared his posture appropriately.

“Admiral. Good morning.”

Amelia turned and took in the awful state of his appearance with her usual grace and tact.

“Good morning, Master Hawkins. I know I’ve caught you at a frightfully early hour, but I will require you to meet Dr. Doppler and myself at my office as soon as you’ve eaten and dressed. There’s a coffee in it for you. And a little something else I think that may interest you.”

Posture still square, bare feet and all, Jim saluted her.

“As soon as I can get my teeth brushed, Admiral.”

Amelia rewarded him with a flickering of fondness behind her official demeanor.

“We’ll look forward to it.”

As soon as Amelia had left them, Jim’s posture collapsed. Slumped, he turned towards his mother.

“I guess I don’t have to repeat any of that for you.”

Sarah pursed her lips and nodded.

“I’ll have something ready for you in a minute, you’d better go get dressed.”

Jim ultimately ended up making quick work of some bread and butter in the ferry taking him to port. He’d dressed quickly, tying his hair back, slipping into nondescript, sleek clothing for his meeting. Amelia preferred it when the sailors, out of uniform, were all neatly dressed and lacking in anything distracting, and Jim knew that his personality was distracting enough on its own without adding loud colors or patterns to it.

The port was barely getting up and about, though intergalactic commerce never truly slept, of course. Some dried-up star surfers disembarked the ferry with Jim, packed navy duffel bags slung over their shoulders, ready to spend the day looking for work. Jim wished he could go out looking with them, but any decent captain in their right mind didn’t so much as acknowledge the recent naval academy graduates. None of them had seen what the seasoned crews had seen in the past decade. What Jim had seen, once.

The Admiral had taken an office in the royal embassy building, which Jim found blessedly easy to stumble upon. It was difficult to avoid the gleaming white and gold stone walls, which sparkled like opals. They all learned early on in school that the building’s beauty was part of an illusion to mask its utility and its frank, over simplistic construction. Without the sparkles, shines, and gleams, it was just as much of a cube as any other port building around it.

A spined, aqua blue receptionist greeted Jim warmly and shuffled him towards Amelia’s office, tucked away in a corner on the bottom floor.

Jim could hear murmured bickering between the Admiral and her husband, and he wondered for a moment if it was rude to knock for his appointment and interrupt them, but he knew the Admiral would be far angrier at him for arriving late out of politeness. He raised a fist to knock, but Amelia called through the wood before he could complete the action.

“Mr. Hawkins, do let yourself in, we can both hear you breathing.”

Amelia’s well-timed jab pulled a smile from him, but Jim was sure to disguise it again by the time the door swung open. She was, as always, impeccably dressed for business, with not a hair out of place. By contrast, Dr. Doppler looked horribly disheveled, with a Qattindog toddler, one of their newest, perched on his hip.

“I swear I wasn’t listening.”

Amelia circled round the other side of her desk and gestured to one of the chairs across its wide surface from her.

“Never you mind, Mr. Hawkins. Please, have a seat. Time is of the essence.”

“Good morning, Doctor.”

Jim said somewhat shakily to Dr. Doppler as he approached his seat. He heard some sort of grumbled retort, but none of the words came through. The receptionist Jim had seen before emerged from behind the office door and relieved the doctor of his little one. It was very serious business indeed, then. Amelia steepled her fingers and took a deep breath, a far-away look in her eyes before she began to speak. Her cool, but visibly shaken demeanor was unsettling, to say the least.

“I shouldn’t spend too long mincing words today, so I’ll just jump right in. We need your help.”

Jim perked up instantly, leaning forward in his chair. The itch to get back out into space burned in him like a fever – he was ready to take the worst assignment on the worst vessel, just to get his foot in the door.

“Anything. What do I need to do?”

Amelia glanced towards her husband, sitting on the auxiliary sofa, and tried to relax her worried features with a smile.

“Dr. Doppler has been preparing to debrief you. Oh! I almost forgot – I owe you a coffee.”

Amelia pressed a button on her side of the desk and within a few seconds, a panel opened up and a platform rose through the hollow space with a coffee pot and a few ornate cups. Jim accepted with a small flurry of mumbled thanks, taking his coffee black. Once they’d finished their beverage shuffling, Dr. Doppler appeared around Jim’s shoulder with his hologram tablet ready, and without speaking, he tapped a few buttons on the screen, projecting forth a few assorted images. Jim recognized a few of them as pirates, some of the galaxy’s most wanted, and the others were of places on worlds he’d never been to. With a slight thrill, Jim noted to himself that it looked not unlike a manhunt.  

“So, Jim, essentially what we’re looking at here is a group of criminals, travelling in specifically timed intervals between the locations pictured here. It doesn’t look like much this way, but if we place them in connected points…”

He swiveled his fingers on the tablet’s surface and all of the images blended together into a massive map, dotted with points and lines of different colors to indicate each criminal’s arrival and departure, going to and from each location. There must have been dozens of visits to each place, all of the lines wove tangled, intricate webs together. It was fair to say that whoever they were, they were casing a place, watching a target of some kind. Jim felt a swell of hope rising in his chest at the thought of pursuing them himself, hidden just out of view at all times. He’d always hoped espionage would be part of his naval career.

“We received communication from a ship’s captain on his route between nebulae that he noticed some strange activity in our very port – a couple of spacers arguing about a route that’s been out of use for nearly twenty years. Now, it could have been anything, but there were other funny little coincidences.”

Jim was slightly distracted during the debrief by the lack of animation in the doctor’s voice, which usually lilted like a balloon losing its air when squeezed, but he tried his best to focus on the issue at hand.

“The captain also said he noticed that they were using… _radio communicators_ to talk to some third party.”

Jim felt his brow furrowing. There wasn’t any good reason for them to be using such outdated communication devices, with the exception that none of the surrounding ships or ports could likely pick up their radio waves from long distance.  

“Now, there’s no data to support this claim, but since that captain called in his tip, key members of the naval forces have been disappearing. Captains. Lieutenants.”

Dr. Doppler paused and took a long breath before adding.

“Admirals.”

Amelia almost seemed to flinch, but her micro-expression was too quick, and Jim wasn’t entirely sure he’d seen it.

“I don’t mean to interrupt you, Dr. Doppler, but…I haven’t heard anything about these officers disappearing.”

Amelia finally spoke up again.

“Her majesty’s armed forces haven’t released any information because they’re concerned that this group’s movements will become considerably more difficult to track if they’re aware that they’re being pursued.”

“That makes some sense, but why not set a bounty on them? All the information anyone would need is their names and faces.”

“…I’m afraid that’s part of the battle. We don’t know who they are. We have their faces, but they have eradicated any trace of their identities from every file across the galaxy. These criminals are operating at unprecedented levels of stealth.”

The doctor dismissed the map that still projected in front of them, now forgotten.

“Jim, what we’re asking of you isn’t going to be easy. This is a massive undertaking for someone so new to spacing professionally.”

“So, what exactly are we talking here? Espionage? Data collection? Deck swabbing?”

Neither of them seemed to react to his joke, and he began to worry that he was looking at some kind of covert deck swabbing assignment, indeed.

“Please, Mr. Hawkins, this matter is incredibly serious. Whoever they are, this crew moves quickly, and every moment that we allow them to remain anonymous, we risk losing someone else.”

Jim cocked an eyebrow at her.

“So…where do I come into this?”

“I was hoping you’d ask.”

Amelia called up a holographic projection from the surface of her desk, showcasing a beautiful set of jewels and precious metals from all reaches of space.

“These, as you know, are our royal family’s crown jewels. Treasures plucked from all over space, and each one capable of great and terrible things. The loss of these jewels, and specifically, their loss to these degenerates could result in disaster beyond our wildest imagination. We have reason to believe that these pirates have been watching the royal estate, in shifts, based on their travel patterns.”

Jim narrowed his eyes at the thought of poorly educated petty thieves having the faculties to successfully pull off that sort of heist but said nothing. Interrupting Amelia had roughly the same professional effect as committing a galactic felony.

“We believe they’ve taken to… _vanishing_ experienced officers to make their invasion easier, when the time comes for it. For now, our standing defense crews have kept them well off, and there‘s no sign of a breach to the royal estate, but I know they’re just biding their time. They’ll be back when they think we aren’t looking, and _that_ is where you come in. We have to catch them before they _know_ that we’ve connected the dots.”

Amelia leaned forward and gave a grand gesture over the projection tablet and an image of Dr. Doppler’s library appeared in front of them.

“What we need you to do first is help the good doctor comb through our collected evidence and records for any sign, any at all, of who these pirates might be. The data spans across the last thirty years, for good measure. We aren’t sure if any of this dates back further, as of yet.”

“I don’t mean any disrespect, Admiral, but we’re not exactly taught how to handle these outdated databases at the Academy. I just...don’t see how I’d be helpful to you.”

“I know this wasn’t what you had in mind, Jim, but we could use your help. I firmly believe you have the cunning and discretion necessary to radically change the course of our investigation. This operation will be delicate, and we aren’t sure what direction it could take if we don’t act quickly enough. The lifeline of our society and empire depends on it.”

“So, if you don’t mind my asking before I say anything else, why me? There have got to be more qualified spacers for this job.”

Husband and wife shared a glance as if mentally discussing whose turn it was to speak next. They’d known he would need convincing, but neither of them particularly wanted the responsibility of figuring out how to go about it. Eventually Dr. Doppler spoke up, his voice soft.

“We…have invited a few parties into this investigation that we thought would be qualified to handle it, and none of them were able to move us forward in the least, and-”

He reached across the desktop to take Amelia’s hand, and to Jim’s surprise, she gripped it tightly, looking up at him as if he were the star allowing for her planet to support life.

“-our time is so precious, now. From a personal perspective, we don’t know who else has been targeted. Any naval officer could be the next to go missing, and there are so few clues. Not a single one has been found, and time could be running out for any one of them. My stake in this is my wife and our way of life. Think of your mother, and your home.”

Jim thought of his mother and how frightened and heartbroken she’d looked as his father climbed aboard the skiff that carried him away forever. Dr. Doppler was right; lives were at stake, and Jim wasn’t sure he could hold so many of them on his conscience by turning them down out of his own cowardice. Even if Jim didn’t know any of the other officers and the dismantling of their galaxy’s structure was too abstract to hang on to, he could certainly connect to the doctor’s desire to keep his family safe and in one piece. It would be slow, tense work, but if he could get it anywhere, he could fast track his career with ease, a much better idea than trying his luck waiting on the world to right itself again.

“When do we get started?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably the shortest chapter you're going to get for this fic, and I'm anticipating Chapter 4 coming either by the end of today or sometime later this week. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Jim’s next few days on Montressor were far more structured than the first. He set himself on an organized sleep schedule like he had while living at the academy and structured some daily exercise outside in Montressor’s gentle, cool autumnal atmosphere. The academy had no seasons, and he’d really missed them in his long time away, though he was aware only Terrans really cared so much about the changing of a star’s position in the sky and the cyclical change of temperatures.

Jim didn’t mind spending that cooler time of year mostly inside of the doctor’s study, given both its coziness and relative spaciousness. It was one of the best work spaces they could have asked for, and during the days, they had the entire place to themselves to get their work done. Amelia had been on a voyage, blessedly safely, and long before Jim’s return, they’d hired a nanny to look after the many little ones of theirs who weren’t away at boarding school. For concentration’s sake, Jim also left Morph at home with his mother, though he was sure the little miscreant had found a way to make a nuisance of himself already.

The work moved slowly. Days and late nights passed by with nothing but endless data parsing, arguing, and rough sketching until they’d narrowed down their methods somewhat. With Jim running regression models to predict the next rotational appearance of one of their fugitives and Dr. Doppler searching through existing criminal files for pirates with any connections to their locations, there was a chance they’d catch up before too many officers were lost. Even still, their progress felt strained, and all they could do was shoot blindly into the dark until some real purchase could be found.

Jim dropped his fist onto the desktop with a resounding thud, successfully causing a pile of books to slide off the surface and land in a noisy heap on the floor. Dr. Doppler jumped at the suddenness of the sound, but quickly began to re-gather them to preserve the sense of “organization” in his work space.

“That bad, huh?”

Jim shook his head and sighed, eyes still trained on yet another completely fumbled regression model, scanning for any hint of making a slight change and salvaging his work somehow.

“It’s probably not a total loss, but no matter what I do, this model won’t produce a result for me. All we need is a hint at interpreting where they might go next. Just a hint. And then one of us could intercept them, and that would make all of the difference.”

The doctor nodded thoughtfully.

“We’ve run into the same problem before. We’d just station an officer in every spot to try intercepting them, but we can’t use that resource without giving ourselves away. And anyway, the risk of this mission getting fumbled is too high.”

“The real problem is that even if we happen to catch one of them with this regression, they’ll all be tipped off. We really want to try to see if there’s some kind of home base. Even if it’s just individual homes, those are much easier to find than hoping to grab the right guy off of the street.”

Jim pushed out of his chair to pace. The fact was that they didn’t have enough information to rely on solid figures to get them by. If they wanted any significant progress, they’d have to make a few educated guesses and get by on faith alone. Their lack of resources frustrated Jim to no end, he was left trying to create a spark on decent tinder, but without any flint to get him started.

“Look, this might not be a great idea, but it’s worth trying. Have you tried intercepting their radio waves yet? One of us would have to pick one of the usual spots and spend some time lying in wait, but if we could pick up their communications…”

Dr. Doppler looked at him as if he’d started painting himself purple and calling himself a purp.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Radios had been replaced by far more advanced technology almost a century before Jim was born, and he therefore couldn’t expect Dr. Doppler to know the first thing about it.

“Radio waves are an old Terran form of communication, they’re not super useful to us from over here but…basically, if we can get close enough to our suspects to intercept their communications, we can track them down much faster. It’ll at least help out while we try to make headway here in the “lab”.”

“That’s genius, how did you know that? Amelia can dispatch someone first thing tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if it’s genius. It’s kind of a lucky coincidence, I just know a little something about radio.”

When Jim was young, his father had pulled out an old communicator radio and taught Jim how to use it. It barely worked and the static crackled like dead leaves under his shoes, but they’d shouted back and forth at each other through it until his mother had to ask them to quiet their noise down. It was more than likely one of the only positive memories he had left of his father, but he thought it might be insensitive to mention to the man who had stood in for his father since the day he’d left them in the dust.

“Listen, why don’t you take a break and let me look at your regression? Maybe there’s something I can do with it.”

Jim nodded gratefully and gestured towards the chair he’d previously occupied.

“It’s all yours. I don’t want to look at the damn thing one more time today.”

Jim stretched and paused over by the window, letting the soothing, clouded over daylight cool his headache. He had been a fair hand at statistical analysis at the academy, and he hoped his limited experience would at the least offer their investigation some kind of boost, but thus far he’d only managed to think of his first good idea while thinking out loud. He knew they wanted him to be creative, to break from the mold in choosing his solutions, that’s why they’d asked him on, but all improvisation did for him was make him feel directionless. He’d joined the navy to learn how to do that sort of work methodically and correctly, using reliable data, not hunches.

“Hey, doc?”

Jim asked, still keeping his eyes aimed out of the window. He pressed on when Dr. Doppler didn’t respond.

“Do you think I’ll make it onto a ship before this all goes to pieces?”

He heard the exhausted sigh come in answer just before the disappointing words.

“I really do hope so, Jim.”

Jim wanted to do better than living on hope. He felt as if everything he’d worked towards, every life event thus far was leading him into doing something great and very important and succeeding at it, too. It was something every kid dreamed of, but Jim knew, just knew, he was in spitting distance of it. He just had to wait out the roadblock first, or otherwise try to remove it from his path on his own.

“I didn’t think it was going to be like this. I know it’s kind of dumb, but I really did think I might end up…battling things out on the front lines like some kind of war hero.”

He looked back over his shoulder at Dr. Doppler and saw him raise his head from his work, his shoulders pinched in a nonverbal gesture that Jim knew. There wasn’t any easy way to let Jim down or to smother his dreamer’s soul, and he knew that he was difficult to talk down once he’d set his mind to certain heights.

“Most of us don’t get to be war heroes.”

Was all Dr. Doppler said. Jim heard the tinge of sadness in the paternal voice, and his heart pulled for a moment for the only father figure he’d known his entire life. Not exactly the only, but the only who really counted, because he’d stuck around.

“Maybe not, but not all of us get to be well published astronomers who had a hand in saving the galaxy from a band of pirates, either.”

The doctor laughed and it was the lightest attitude Jim had seen on him since taking the case. He couldn’t imagine how terrified the whole family was, with Amelia’s life on the line every second. Jim turned his gaze back to the outside, watching clouds of mist rolling over Montressor’s craggy hillsides. In his mind’s eye, an angry streak of red and black bled across the sky and the crack of an engine burning itself out exploded through the atmosphere. Before, all they’d needed was one pirate making a snap decision out of desperation to set events into motion, but that decision had come after years of pursuit, sweat, tears, and blood. If they could intercept communication…it wouldn’t take much to push one of the group into a desperate situation and set the fire of their investigation into full blaze. Pirates cracked easily under pressure because of their inherent weakness; they stood for nothing and fell for anything. There was no brotherhood or unity under a jolly roger, just selfishness and insatiable thirst for material wealth.

Jim, surprised at the harshness of his own line of thought, shook his head to clear it and turned back to the study to take up the files the doctor had been searching through before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it would be fun to throw in some statistics lingo as they work on this investigation, hopefully at least one of you has heard of a regression model before. Please leave me any and all feedback in the comments, and thank you to those who have left comments and kudos so far, you know who you are!!


	4. Author's Note

Hi, y'all!

Just a brief note to let you know this chapter may run late, but more importantly, the next chapter will definitely be posted later than on schedule. Between now and December 7th, I'm expected to complete a lot of projects that are mostly writing-based, leaving me little to no time to work on this for a little while. 

HOWEVER

Depending on things such as authorial spoons and free time I'm as of right now unaware of, I may very well still end up posting next week's chapter before the week is out. Thank you so much to those of you who have read and left me kudos (and my wonderful commenter, thank you!!) and I really hope you'll stick with me as I work on staying on schedule for this fic. The semester is almost over, so this is hopefully the only delay we can expect in the schedule. 

Thank you again for reading and stay warm!

Jen


	5. Chapter 4 Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long absence trying to get my life together, this is a two-parter. I have most of part two all ready to go, but I thought I'd go on and post both parts separately to draw out the suspense. I hope y'all enjoy!

“I can’t believe it.”

“Can’t believe what?”

“Doctor, you’ll want to come and see this for yourself.”

The Doctor’s library had grown dark and close as the daylight hours waned away into night. Their search had gone on for weeks, each of them taking turns to pore over endless piles of physical files, and they’d just begun to make some real progress on locating their targets when the message came through.

The official communication from their liaison was pulled up on Jim’s screen in front of his models. He swiveled the frame for Dr. Doppler’s approach, a wild grin pinching his cheeks painfully. In spite of his own desire to remain calm and collected, he was too excited at their very tangible lead to avoid directing his grin up at his mentor. The Doctor hadn’t so much as hinted at smiling since weeks before, and in the darkness of the dimly lit library, Jim hoped he’d be able to see when he finally did. Jim tapped the screen for emphasis, which chimed unhappily at him in response.

“Look. Names. Two names.”

The doctor leaned over Jim’s shoulder and adjusted his glasses to try to get a better look.

“Look at that. Ek’Lin and Herre.”

“You don’t look thrilled.”

Dr. Doppler shrugged, sighing heavily.

“It’s a strong development, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re using code names. They would have to be idiotic to use their real identities.”

“I mean, we’re dealing with pirates. Not exactly the best and brightest in the galaxy.”

Dr. Doppler nodded.

“You’re right, but even still. To pull off a heist as big as the one they’re posturing to pull, you’d have to be a complete moron not to use codenames. They’ve gone undetected long enough to suspect that there’s some intelligence there, Jim.”

“Try to be a little bit excited. Even if they are codenames, we’re another step closer.”

Jim pleaded with him, sounding every bit as young as he was. Dr. Doppler looked down at him with an expression that he’d seen before, on his mother, while begging her to let him go with the crew in search of Treasure Planet. Jim tried to ignore it, pressing on.

“We should schedule a meeting with your wife and discuss the next steps. I’m sure our people on the ground have already started working towards getting our hands on Ek’Lin and Herre, but we’ll need to figure out what kind of data they’ll need to continue pursuit.”

“Amelia’s having a busy week.”

“Well, she can’t be so busy that us saving her life gets tabled in favor of something else.”

The doctor threw his hands up in defeat.

“Alright, I give in. I’m not supposed to tell you this right here and now, but we’ve been defunded.”

Jim spun around in his seat, lightning fast, dread building in his chest like a dark cloud. The darkness of the night that pressed in against the library’s windows inched closer to them.

“What?”

“I can’t say it any plainer for you, Jim, our resources are slashed. Starting next week, we won’t have access to any of the same databases at all. They say there are better qualified agents at the capital who can handle the investigation from here.”

Jim sprung up from his chair, leaving the Doctor scrambling out of his way.

“They can’t do that. They can’t let us do the hard work and then take the wheel just when we’ve made it easy for them.”

“I’m afraid they can.”

Jim’s hands collided with the desktop with an audible bang. How could they put work into his hands and then strip it away just when he and the doctor had found some success? Whatever they were doing was working, surely they could be allowed to continue until success also evaded them, as it had the others before them. Weeks of work, between the two of them, and they’d created a foothold that most of the best and brightest of Her Majesty’s forces couldn’t create with months of effort. What about that implied that they could make anything more of the investigation just because they had some pirates to grab onto?

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t accept this.”

“It’s not a question of accepting it, Jim, it’s a hard and final fact.”

Dr. Doppler bent so easily under pressure. Jim knew that Amelia liked that about him, that she could persuade him to bend to her will, but it was a quality Jim disdained in his mentor most of the time. Especially given the fact that Jim’s career would certainly suffer a permanent slight if he were to just let the investigation go to someone else’s care.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to break any rules? At all?”

The doctor shrugged uselessly.

“Not really. Rule-breaking rarely ends well.”

“If we let them have all of this now, right now, they’re going to fail. These higher ups don’t know how pirates think, how they move. If they did, they would have already found Ek’Lin and Herre before we did, but they didn’t, did they?”

Jim paced the length of the study feverishly, his determination burning in him like a freshly fed wood stove.

“Only you and I could figure out where to look for these guys. I don’t believe for a second that any of these capital city agents have even heard of human radios, let alone know how to read a printed star map the way you do! Whoever these criminals are, they’re running on systems older than most spacers would ever bother to learn. That’s their entire game. They’re untraceable because no one would begin to know how to look for them.”

Jim paused and rubbed the back of his neck, where the navy had marked his identification code on his first day as a cadet. It didn’t look like anything to those who didn’t know what to look for, a few little swirls and pin pricked dots like tiny ink black freckles an inch or two from his hairline. He’d sworn on that very first day, the heat and dull pain of his tattoo still burning fresh on the surface of his skin, to serve Her Majesty for his lifetime. He’d agreed to follow the orders of his senior officers, to protect Her Majesty’s domain from all enemies foreign and domestic. Jim knew that his oath required him to satisfy all elements of his service to the galaxy, but his senior officers’ orders would prevent him directly from protecting Her Majesty’s domain, no matter how they wanted to spin his involvement in the criminal investigation or, in this case, lack thereof.

“We need to go talk to the Admiral immediately. You said it yourself when you were convincing me to come onboard for this; think of your family and your home. Would you want to leave their fate in someone else’s hands when you know you could save them yourself?”

Dr. Doppler had grown a twinkle in his eye that Jim recognized as buried determination. He could be convinced to help Jim pursue their leads, after all.

“What you’re suggesting is a terrible idea and has no reason to work, Jim. Even just the thought of getting Amelia to sign on for it…I don’t know if it can be done with so little to go on…But if we _don’t_ do it and they don’t succeed either…”

Jim watched as the twinkle grew behind the Doctor’s pensive gaze.

“My god, you may be right. But who would execute the fieldwork? We’re just desk jockeys.”

Jim held his arms open by way of an answer. The twinkle vanished and was replaced by a panic.

“Oh, Jim, no. No, no.”

“Yes. Think about it, I’ve done fieldwork before, but I didn’t have half of the training I have now.”

“That was very different! Had we known anything about what was going on below decks, you wouldn’t have been allowed within two lightyears of that ship.”

“But I was just a kid!”

“You _are_ a kid. You’re _Sarah’s_ kid. And I promised her I would keep you out of trouble.”

Jim sighed and ran his hands across his face, hoping the motion would clear his head and show him the right answers. That was a fair point; his mother would lose her mind knowing Jim was placing himself directly in harm’s way, even if it was for the greater good, but Jim knew that he’d have to find a way around it or his life would never start.

“Who says she has to know?”

“Jim!”

“No one is required to tell her. I’m an adult.”

Shaking his head, the Doctor stood firm.

“No, I’m sorry. I won’t move forward with this until we’re _all_ onboard. I already risked your life once without your mother’s knowledge. It just isn’t what family does.”

Jim nodded.

“Fine. Give me some time. I’ll talk to her.”

Jim made a bee-line for the front hall and Dr. Doppler reeled, trying to keep his eyes trained on his mentee.

“What- right now?”

Jim didn’t answer – he’d already gone.

Jim raced home to the inn, scarcely pausing to get both arms of his coat on in his haste. Montressor’s damp, cool air raised goosepimples on his skin, and he wished as he went on foot that he still had the solar surfer to force the wind through his hair. It was never up to regulation, but he’d loved it all the more for the extra kick it had that the regulation surfers didn’t. The same quality often lead to the cops dragging him back to his mother’s doorstep and extra cleaning duty at home, but it had been well worth it.

When Jim finally reached the inn and let himself inside, he was surprised to find Qee and B.E.N. serving the few guests finishing late suppers in the dining room.

“Hey- where’s mom?”

“JIMMY!”

“Yes, hey, B.E.N. Where’s mom?”

“Jimmy, it’s a MESS, a BIG MESS.”

“…It looks fine. Where’s mom?”

B.E.N. shook his golden head emphatically.

“No, no, no, you don’t want to go up there right now.”

“I’m very sure that I do- wait. Up there? What’s going on?”

Jim tried to remain patient. The academy had taught him that much. Endless patience was a valuable virtue for cadets who might never reach the Etherium before ageing out of their never-begun careers. He shook his mind of that thought for the moment. It would only cloud his judgement. B.E.N. was silent, practically shaking with his extra nervous energy.

“B.E.N. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Well, some Justicebots came to the door earlier, dressed real nice and crisp.”

A pang hit Jim’s gut like the breath had been knocked straight out of him.

“What did they say?”

“I don’t know, she wouldn’t let me stick around to hear. But don’t go upstairs! She’s in a bad way, Jimmy.”

Jim wanted to feel something besides a sticking, needy disappointment. Why did it have to happen _now_? Was the universe determined to get in his way?

“It’s okay, pal, I’ll go talk to her.”

The trek up towards the certainly bad news Sarah had received felt endless. Whatever chance Jim hoped to have in convincing her to support him in a suicide mission dwindled with each step he took towards her. The upstairs hallway where Jim’s room was tucked away was dark, lit only by the glow coming from beneath Jim’s bedroom door. He could hear voices from the other side of the door, only one of which he recognized as his mother, but he knew where the second little echo was coming from, nonetheless.

He knocked on the door frame lightly after letting himself in.

“Hey.”

Sarah’s face was red and puffy around her eyes.

“Hi, honey.”

Morph chirped his greeting from his place in the palm of her hand, his expressive eyes reflecting her grief.

“We need to talk.”


	6. Chapter 4 Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I had to split this one up into two separate updates, but here it is! Now I know the set up is taking time, but the good stuff is coming, I promise. Thank you as always for reading and reviewing (and kudosing)! :)

Jim knew, somewhere in his rational mind, that the day was coming.

He’d hoped his father would have the decency to wait and stay quietly alive until they’d forgotten about him altogether. Even so, while he could force himself to forget everything he’d known about his father, Jim knew that his mother never could.

“I got a visit today.”

Jim braced himself for the oncoming impact. As soon as she said it to him, it would become a reality.

“It’s about your dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She paused to stroke across Morph’s head.

“His ship was shot down on the outskirts of the galaxy.”

She looked as if she might be sick trying to tell him.

“He’s dead, sweetheart.”  

Jim expected some kind of impact to hit him. He expected some sort of weight to rest on his shoulders, some kind of grief-filled emptiness to begin hollowing him out from the inside, but nothing happened at all. He waited before reacting, waited for the _something_ to kick in, to take over, to hurt in him.   

“Oh.”

He finally breathed out to answer her. Numbness surrounded him on all sides.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Sarah focused her attention on Morph, letting him rub his face across her fingers, purr at her sweetly.

“Y’know, I just hoped…I hoped you would meet him again. I hoped he would get to see you like this.”

Jim fought the urge to respond sarcastically. Yes, to get to see him like _this_. A desk lackey whose last time on a ship had been seven odd years ago, shoulder to shoulder with seething pirates. He was sure to do his father proud with that.

“I did too.”

Jim lied, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck, over his navy ID. The truth be told, he’d hoped their paths would never cross. He had no reason to suspect that his father wanted a relationship with him, and if he’d ever been interested, he would have bothered to swing by the Benbow on shore leave. Morph rubbed himself up against Sarah’s damp cheek and Jim knew then that he should have hugged her, from the very beginning. That’s what family was supposed to do when someone died. Even if it was someone he hated more than anything.

“You know you’ve been a great mom, right?”

He wasn’t sure what made him want to reassure her, but something about his mother’s grief felt tainted by disappointment in herself. Jim wished he could pass on some of his numbness to her and take on some of her pain instead. To feel anything at all would be better than nothing. Sarah smiled at him and opened her arms, Morph flitting out of the way.

“Thank you.”

Jim embraced her easily, feeling every ounce of loneliness and pain that his father had left her with weighing on her all at once. It felt only natural to want to blame even his theoretical career collapse on his father, too, but Jim knew, even in the blind confusion of his numbness, that it wasn’t true.

Sarah pulled out of their hug and wiped at her face with her apron, a gesture that hitched Jim’s breath and tugged at a string fixed somewhere in his chest, especially with Morph peering over her shoulder at him, like the shadow of another time and place making itself known. When their eyes met, her brow furrowed and Jim braced himself for a probing question about the ghost that was looming behind his eyes.

“This has to be so hard for you, Jim.”

He swallowed, hard.

“Yeah. It is.”

“You never really knew your dad, did you?”

Jim knew his father by the occasional pat on the head, by a deep voice that he no longer remembered, a face that had become blurred and written over by time and memory. He remembered the sounds of his parents fighting, loud and unnerving, of his mother refusing to go to sleep afterwards, the sound of her footfalls walking up and down the halls of the house at odd hours. He remembered watching his father’s skiff pull away from the dock. Jim felt his eyes drift to the window through which he could see the very same dock, the string in his chest pulling like a low rumble of thunder under the layers of numbness his lack of grief afforded him.

“No, I didn’t really know him.”

Jim was startled by Morph brushing against his hands insistently, begging for a head scratch. The whole night felt clouded over by feeling and the absence of feeling. By sensation and lack of it. Even in the quiet stillness of his bedroom, Jim felt as if the universe had become intent on sweeping over him, bending him  under the impact of it all. Morph’s malleable pink form shifted amiably under his attention, and Jim remembered, in the back of his mind, a set of cybernetic fingers stroking across the same little shapeshifter’s head.

“Did you, Mom? Did you really know him, I mean?”

Sarah stared back at Jim in silence for a few moments, her expression unchanging.

“I did, once. I think.”

Fumbling with her apron strings, she smiled towards the floorboards.

“We were so young when we decided to have you. Back then, he was…well, I don’t know, he was funny and handsome. And he always wanted to tell you stories before bed when he was home, even when you were still growing inside of me. We didn’t even have the inn yet. When I met him, he was a hardworking sailor who just wanted a little piece of land to settle on and lots of kids. Of course, I had to talk him out of that one. At the time all I really wanted to do was find a little place to call my own, carve out as mine.”

She ruffled his hair and sighed. The redness in her eyes had started to fade a little, her blood vessels’ irritation seeping away.

“Having you was such a joy to both of us, but our marriage was doomed. I don’t know what changed, exactly, but somewhere in there I think we forgot how to love each other and we never really learned how to again. He left us with the inn, but I’ll never forgive him for leaving you without a father.”

Jim could feel his chest start to pinch. Something had finally started to hurt, but it wasn’t his grief for his father. It was grief for the youth that Sarah lost to raising him on her own.

“Mom, you know…you have everything you need to close the inn. You could always go off on your own, carve out that special place, just for you.”

She laughed, her voice thick with emotion.

“Oh, honey! I could never close this place down. Don’t you get it? This place _is_ mine.”

The hurt opened in Jim like a fresh oil burn in the kitchen, raw and real. He forced himself to smile back at her, to support her as wholly as possible, but in him he could feel the emptiness making way for a kind of pain that he could only erase one way.

“I think I need to go on a little walk. Are you going to be okay here?”

Sarah shrugged at him, waving a hand over at Morph.

“I’ll be fine, I’m not alone. I’ve got Morphy, here. And B.E.N. You go on. Take your time.”

Jim rose from the bed’s edge, girding himself for the conversation with the Doctor that lay ahead of him.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay? I just need a minute to…process this.”

Sarah nodded and smiled supportively and Jim felt himself stoop unconsciously to lean down and drop a kiss onto her forehead. He’d never be able to pay back the debt he owed her. Never mind the debts his father still owed her, cold in his grave. On his way out, Jim waved at B.E.N., continuing the masquerade of the short stroll, but as soon as he’d moved out of the robot’s view from the inn’s windows, Jim broke into a run.

The distance to Dr. Doppler’s home felt much longer, even at his unsustainable pace, but Jim knew that what needed to be done couldn’t wait. The weight of the universe and the burdens it had thrust upon him had been lifted and replaced by a single-minded determination he’d known once in a distant memory of a boy that had grown up into a man moved only by rationality. Whatever was happening to him was far from rational, but it wasn’t any less important.

Jim only briefly stopped to catch his breath, ringing the front door’s bell even though he knew it was late, even though he knew it was unlikely Dr. Doppler was still awake. Much to his pleasant surprise and relief, the Doctor was, in fact, still awake, and he answered the door with much alarm and confusion.

“Jim? What in the world are you doing here?”

“I need to speak with you. Now.”

He didn’t wait to be invited inside, choosing instead to pull the Doctor by the arm gently to his library, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the rest of the family. The whole house was dark, as dark as when he’d left earlier that same evening, and he knew that he’d need to use every ounce of emotion he had to set things right.

“Jim, what’s the meaning of this?”

“I know it’s late, I’m sorry to bother you, but I can’t wait. Mom and I had some news tonight.”

He waited until they’d reached the Doctor’s library before filling him in, letting the pain and sadness he felt for his mother fill in the spaces where his sadness for his father inevitably fell short. Dr. Doppler listened to him with silent understanding and sympathy, his fear for his wife’s fate reading more and more visibly on him the longer Jim spoke.

“I guess the point is that I came back tonight because I can’t let us take this investigation takeover lying down. I can’t. Not after this.”

“Oh, Jim. That’s the last thing you should worry about. Your mother needs you in this difficult time.”

“She’s well taken care of and never alone. I can do this.”

“Jim, there isn’t anything we can do to fix this. Some things you have to bear.”

Jim felt the emotion welling up inside of him, heavy and painful,

“Listen to me. We have to do this. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can get to the bottom of all of this and bring it to an end. You want your life _back_? I want my life to _happen_. There are so many things I hoped to do that I will never even get the chance to attempt if we leave this to the people who _keep failing us_!”

Deep, unshaking hope squeezed at his throat and pricked behind his eyes, but he fought to keep his composure and drive his point home.

“Please. Please just let me have the chance to try.”

Dr. Doppler had gone deathly still and silent, staring hard at Jim with eyes that shone with paternal concern, but within a few moments, Jim could see the doubt fall away and make room for belief, like a light shone into a dark room.

The smothering shadows lifted and outside of the library’s windows, the stars shone, bright and true.

“Alright. I’m with you.”

 

 


	7. A/N

Hey guys! 

 

I just wanted to put out this note letting you know I'm still working on this fic and I apologize for the lack of recent updates. Obviously, this semester has gotten more insane than I expected (as it always does), but this is my last two weeks of class and as a result, my time is getting freer to work on this more often, so I'm really hoping to put out an update soon. 

Thanks for your patience and your kudos. <3

Jen


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